If you can sell your crops and livestock to John Gilchrist, you can probably sell them anywhere in the country. Calgary s favourite foodie, Gilchrist is the West s most trusted voice on food. In addiiton to his weekly food column in the Calgary Herald and a spot each Friday on CBC Radio One, he teaches food and culture courses at the University of Calgary and is the popular author of several foodie-type books. But Gilchrist is no food faddist. He aims to inject common sense into issues that are hotly emotional on both sides of field-fork divide.
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MB ” How much has your farm upbringing
influenced how you think of food?
JG ” When I grew up in the 50s and 60s, if we didn t grow it, my grandfather a mile and a half away grew it, or my uncle two and a half miles away grew it, or one of the neighbours grew it. This 100-mile diet trend mine was a two-and-a-half-mile diet.
MB ” Why are consumer opinions negative towards large-scale farming practices and positive to small-scale, specialized farming?
JG ” A lot of it is popular culture, a lot of it is sensationalist media production. Whatever the movie of the month is seems to show big ag as bad.
MB ” What recourse do individual producers have?
JG ” No one actually really cares about the messages, as long as their food is relatively safe.
The proof is in the pudding. The biggest thing is to produce good product day in and day out, and not have a recall or a scare. What will win the day is to improve production standards so that products consistently speak for themselves. Words are just words.
MB ” Is part of the problem that producers might not really know the entire story they need to tell, they just know their own piece of the puzzle?
JG ” Absolutely. It s very easy for there to be a disconnect. The farmer produces a raw product that is processed by someone else and sold by someone else again. And, when it comes to the marketers and distributors, for most of them, selling the food product is just a job. Next week, they ll be selling cars or working in real estate. There is a major disconnect, and the bigger agriculture gets the more disconnected it gets.
MB ” Does that disconnect exist on the consumer side too, making it hard for consumers to have a context for where their food comes from?
JG ” The thing is that most people don t really think about their food. We have a very vocal and concerned minority that are concerned, and that s great because it helps drive awareness.
MB ” So the attitudes of the majority are being shaped by the passions of the few?
JG ” To a certain extent, yes what attitudes there are to be shaped. I think most people don t think much about their food, they just eat it. Even thought they ve heard they should maybe be concerned about their food, they have a lot of other stuff to be concerned about. Every meal is not a subject of major concern. Most people eat whatever is convenient and quick and moderately tasty.
MB ” What trends would you expect in Canadian ag and demand 10-15 years from now?
JG ” On the production end, what we ve seen over the past 20, 30, 40 years is that you ve got to get big or you ve got to get small. Farms have either gotten very, very large or very, very small. I think that s a trend that will continue.
MB ” Do consumers have more power to demand change in their food products?
JG ” I think yes, at both the local, seasonal level and the big-ag level. If people say, Geez, I love those red carrots you grow, could you grow more of those next year, small, specialized producers are generally very willing. That kind of thing is small but it s happening more and more.
At the big-ag level, it s happening too. If you look at something like margarine, it used to just be margarine. Now it s low-salt, high-omega, low-fat, etc. There are umpteen different varieties of margarine, and it s like that for most products today because the consumer wants it.
MB ” And does that consumer power also translate to changes in production techniques?
JG ” I think changes in how much and what kinds of pesticides are being used are being influenced by consumers now, but I don t think
the trend towards decreases in broad-spectrum pesticides started that way. We have to give high-production agriculture credit where it s due. I mean, they started pulling back on kill everything pesticides 30 years ago, before consumers were even aware of what was going on.
MB ” If you could give direct advice to a
new farmer, what would you suggest?
JG ” If you want to have six sections and grow wheat and canola, great there is a great need for that in the world. But, if you want to get small, there are lots of opportunities there.
Pay attention to the consumer and see what it is they want. See what they are buying now and shape your own production towards them.
MB ” So if you yourself were a new young farmer, you d go towards specialization?
JG ” Absolutely. If you re starting out, how can you afford to get six sections and the combines and machinery you need to run the place? It s prohibitively expensive.
I would go small, take the weather out of it, and go for the lowest cost and highest return, which is consumer-direct selling something like hothoused veggies.
MB ” Selling consumer-direct also has the side benefit of giving a producer access to the consumer.
JG ” Correct. That s key the farmer talking directly to the person who is eating the food. There are a lot of people in the food-chain business, especially in the middle range in the processing and marketing of food, who know nothing about food. They are processors and marketers, they are not food people. As a result, you end up with a lot of iffy decisions. You end up with decisions that are not based on food, they are based on production and volumes and profits.
Every time I go to a food show, I have to plug my nose as I walk in from the smell of all the deep-fried stuff and all the new products, a lot of which are aimed at a 15-year old who is looking to stuff their face with anything they can. Like I say, though, that is changing and it s changing from the producer and the consumer up, talking to each other and having a direct relationship about consumption.CG
